I think you get great food for the money here! I always get the Tour of Italy, which has the fettuccini alfredo, with lasagna and chicken parmesan. Their Pasta Fagiole soup with fresly grated paremsan cheese is VERY good! Also love the Zuppa Toscana soup. (Milk based soup with spicy sausage). I make the copycat recipes at home, the one's from Todd Wilbur's book, because they are the most authentic one's. I'm not a big fan of their salad dressing, but it's okay but needs some changes. Being Italian, they should switch to a red wine vinegar or balsamic instead! Their drinks are over-priced! So I just get water. Not that I can't afford them, it's just that I am conservative and don't like to "over-pay" for something. I would not suggest getting the "All you can eat Pasta" when it is offered....because they are soooo slow, especially being Italian. But I think they do it on purpose so the person is less likely to order seconds, or they simply run out of time and have to get back to work or something. Might as well get the regular portion of what you want, instead of the small plates they give you of a pasta, because they are not likely to come back soon enough for you to ask for something else. I don't care for the appetizers that they offer on the menu, they should offer a better or more expansive selection. I like the hot dip but the smoky flavor ruins it, in my opinion. And they use specific spices that I don't care for, so I stay away from dishes that are likely to have those, such as rosemary. I'd give 4 stars, but I deducted one for their slow service. But really, their servers are extremely proper, pleasant and will go out of their way to please you. I am not a wine drinker, so can't comment on that. But I know they are big into the wine. We usually don't have any leftover's here, as the servings are not overly generous. They are "just right"....but for a larger person with a more demanding stomach, they probably won't leave very satiisfied. If you go...you must try their soups!...and definitely get extra cheese grated on top!

Good value for the money. Not the best, but far from the worst.

Bleh. Yuck. I don't think Olive Garden is worth going to at all. You could probably make better pasta in your own kitchen. The breadsticks and the salad are ok and probably your best bet.

I'de like to go there again its been a while. They dont give you the biggest portions but the food is decent, and they have the BEST bread sticks around

This place doesn't even deserve a full star...the service is even worse than their food especially their "management" if that's what you want to call them. I will NEVER go back. I visited on my birthday and had to re-order the entire tables food 3 times because they kept losing the order???! Go elsewhere.

The food is consistent and the service is good. Love the comfort food. Great atmosphere and they are always busy. Must be doing something right!

I like the atmosphere, that's it.

The marsala chicken which is an easy dish to make is terrible. The sauce tasted like gravy and the potatoes were over done and tasteless. Carrabbas (another Italian) has the same dish and is 50 times better.

Breadsticks and salad are both mediocre, but they are free.

Needless to say, I'd rather blow my money elsewhere on GOOD Italian food. People who love olive garden lack taste.

MY FAVORITE! I mean, who can get enough of their salad and breadsticks?! My favorite is the Five Cheese Ziti al Forno. I get it everytime. Oh, and the Black Tie Dessert. Oh wow, just writing this, I think I'm gonna have to make a trip there this weekend!

I won't give a three to a restaurant whose menu does not guarantee that I can have at least one satisfying (and I mean satisfying to me) main course.

The food isn't great.  It's just... food.  They should definitely not be allowed to call themselves an Italian restaurant.  The decor is very cheesy.  All of the dishes pretty much taste the same. The best thing about OG are the bread sticks and salad.  They have the worst soups of any chain restaurant I've ever been in.  The waitstaff is generally friendly and quick.  I like being able to order the lunch portion at any time.  I usually even have leftovers of the smaller portion.  Their coffee is quite good.

The Olive Garden is bad. They have refused to seat me on numerous occasions.  Furthermore, the food isn't that great.  Every time I see one, I want to drink to forget the awful experiences.

food's pretty good, but it always leaves me in a rush to get home...

Olive Garden is my favorite restaurant. I LOVE the salad. My favorite thing is the 5 cheese ziti. it is amazing.

I have worked here before, and besides putting up with the cheap people that love to come here, i think the food is ridiculous as far as ingredients. Everything is loaded with so much cheese, dairy, fat, butter on everything, it's to mask the lack of passion that is put into the recipes. I wish it was more mediterranean style. Plus they shove wine in your face from the moment you walk into the door. If you are going to want to have wine, you will know that before you walk into the door. It seems the employees with the worst work ethic are in charge of salad and breadsticks. It's not that hard, yet they find ways to ruin it. Especially leaving the breadsticks unwrapped for too long will make them hard, dry, gummy, like people have complained about on here. Lately they have been cutting portions to keep down costs.

Its not as hideous as some make it out to be, but numbah and his slow cooker can make a superior product...

I've only been there one time in my life, and it has been the last. It was awful!  I still say it's slop on a plate.

All the salad and bread that you want.  Gee whiz, how compelling!!!  A place where you're treated like family.  Is that Adams Family or Manson Family?  Honestly, I ate at one of these crapatoriums once (never again), and couldn't tell what the Hell I was supposed to be eating.  Pathetic, when you consider how easy Italian food is to produce on a grand scale.

Olive Garden is a crime against humanity (okay maybe that's a bit dramatic, but at least against food). I was dragged there once against my better judgment and they did not fail to uphold my extremely low expectations.

I don't think I really even need to review the food. It seems to be either love / hate based upon whether or not you've ever tasted decent Italian. The pasta is overcooked, the sauces are heavy, always seem to include cream and generally taste awful, the salads are nothing special and I've had better soup from a can.

The particular time I visited was a strange experience in terms of dealing with the waiter. Apparently, they wanted us to take a survey (now I don't think they _really_ wanted ME to take a survey...but anyway), but for whatever reason our waiter couldn't actually print off a bill that included the survey link. So he had us wait around for about 25 minutes before he found the manager. We couldn't opt-out, and honesty + a guilty conscience were all that kept us waiting for so long. I'm not really sure what that was about. Honestly, I didn't bother to take the survey because I don't think I'm their target audience and I certainly didn't want a $5 gift card.

My favorite!!!!

The bread sticks are AMAZING!! But Grece is better than Victor the bread sticks are softer and the wait is shorter.

One in Clackamas and Salem, OR. The women love this place for some reason and usually choose this place for special get-togethers. Nice atmosphere, clean, good aromas abound. Service was better than average. Food portions were meager except for the bread sticks. Food was pretty good actually just not enough. Hard to find good real Italian food in Oregon. (other than pizza)

Olive Garden has great food, but sometimes they cheap you out with meager portions and are notoriously slow when rush hour and dinner begins. Nontheless, ****.

Good food but way 2 expensive

There is only one fairly close to where I live and when I went there years ago it was pretty good. I didn't go to that one for years, but did eat at one in Arlington that was excellent. After about six years I returned to the one near me. I was dating a woman that had never been to an Olive Garden and I insisted that we go. It may not be a coincidense that we broke up soon after that.

The place had become so overly style over substance I can't even begin to put it into words. Wine samples and singers walking around. The food quality had fallen considerably, and the price was pretty high. I think it might have been worse where we were because, for some unfathamable reason, this place has become the place to go. My last trip was about 8 years ago, and they are still lining up around the corner to get in here. What is more annoying than anything is the fact that a real Italian restaurant opened about a half mile away, with outstanding food and lacking the bells and whistles, and it went virtually unnoticed.

Why oh why would anyone within 100 miles of an Italian restaurant dine at Olive Garden?  And why oh why do supposed loved ones continue to give me Olive Garden gift cards for Christmas?  I think I have accumulated about $200 in the the last couple of years and they are wasting away in my junk drawer.  I live near Philly, where you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a great Italian eatery...what are these people thinking?

There are many other Italian sit-down dining chains I would rather go to.

Being no fan of chain restaurants, I probably could have gone through my whole life without eating there, despite their prevalence at least in NJ. In a pinch, I've eaten at "Macaroni Grill" where the price is right and the food generally not too bad, but that's only in a pinch. Given my druthers, I want to eat in an organic Italian (or Chinese, or Spanish, or German, etc.) restaurant run by real people as opposed to a corporation like Pepsico or Bush-Cheney Inc.. However, a few years ago, my parents had just moved from south NJ to north NJ and wanted to take me out for my birthday. Their choice was a nearby Olive Garden. I swallowed down my trepidation and tried to appear as enthusiastic as possible; my parents generally have good taste in food and restaurants, but they were tired from their move, they didn't really know that particular area that well, and they were picking up the tab, so who was I to complain? I've always found Olive Garden TV commercials patronizing and bordering on offensive to Italian-Americans, but I like to think I'm fair and I figured I'd save my judgement until I'd actually eaten there. Well, I have, and hopefully will never have to eat there again. Was it absolutely awful? Not really, but it sure wasn't good. It was corporate; Disneyland's version of an Italian restaurant. The food was tasteless. The wine made it bearable...just. I enjoyed being with my parents, and didn't express my opinion to them, but I'm sure they were not overly enthused either, as we've never eaten there again. This particular Olive Garden was located not far from the estate of legendary Mafia boss Ruggiero "Ritchie the Boot" Boiardo ("The Sopranos" was allegedly based on his crime family). In fact, I took my parents past his estate, which is still standing, even though the Boot is long dead (Life magazine once did a feature on the estate, which had massive gates, statues of his family, gargoyles, and supposedly an incinerator in the back where he disposed of his enemies..."Weird NJ" magazine has done a feature on the estate too). Still, knowing that there's an Olive Garden located nearby, I can't help thinking that the Boot must be rolling over in his grave.

they ruined italian food

I work at OG so i actually know what it's all about. It's the poor man's or should I just say the cheap man's Italian paradise. Unlimited soup, salad and breadsticks is probably the biggest inhumanity ever commited against OG servers. Screw all you cheap bastards who stuff your face with those margarine soaked breadsticks. Screw you soup and saladers who only pay 7 bucks a person to get so full you could vomit and still only tip 2 or 3 dollars. If you are so cheap you're gonna get the most inexpensive, most easily abusable meal, at least give your server 5 bucks for all of the disappointment he or she has from not boosting their sales!

They reduced the amount of things in the salad except for lettuce. The chicken is frozen and the food is horrible. I will never go back

I love their bottomless bowl of salad and the Fettichini Alfredo w/shrimp is delicious!

I love olive garden. it and outback are my favorite restaurants. i tend to get chicken alfredo. though the breadsticks are sometimes really good but at other times not worth eating. overall its a really good restaurant

  Olive garden is great food for everyone.

*Recommended* Salad and bread sticks, Alfredo, Cheesecake. All of those do not dissapoint here.

"When you're here, you're family." Ah, yes, the decline of the American family.

But seriously, stay home and eat frozen food. You don't have to tip, and you're getting the same thing, pretty much. Unless it's salad. For proper Italian food, you need fresh, quality ingredients, and I don't know if a chain restaurant can really deliver that sort of thing from off the back of a semi.

Not real exciting. Soup and salad for lunch is probably your best bet. The fettucine alfredo is bland. The baked ziti is not baked. There seems to be a lot of cheesy male waiters there which, I find rather annoying.

olive garden should get rid of all those spiders in their toilets that bite people's butts adn kill them..i dont find that very appetizing!

Wretched. About as Italian as MacDonalds.

Pasta made of rubber marinated in Three-in-One oil. Disgusting.

No "Chefs" at this place. Go here only if you want to gorge on salad with passable Italian dressing and breadsticks. Don't waste your money on the entrees. Service is terrible, and the seafood is not something you'd feed to your cat; it's that old.

Service is slow, I like OG better seven years ago.  The prices were more reasonable.  Now they have gotten too high for the quality and service is lacksdasical most of the time.  Now they opened a Romano's Macaroni Grill in town so that has better prices for what you get, along with Smokey Bones, which is excellent BarBQue and fixins.

i love the atmosphere in the Indianapolis restaurant but there's one that sucks in Anderson. It really depends on where you visit. The waiters are on different ends of the spectrum (when comparing Anderson's and Indy's)... I'd never go to the Anderson's restuarant..ever again.. but Indy (I live halfway between both) I will visit anytime!

Almost, but not quite, something to notify the Italian American Anti- Defamation league about...try a real place instead

I like them, always a good meal.

Free Breadsticks and Salad BABY! bring on the free wine and now we're talking, and the kickass food of course, the atmosphere is the best.

I'm an Italian and I cook. Olive Garden's food is Italian in name only. The food reeks of corporate "I think it's Italian" menu items and highly processed frozen ingredients. I knew I was in for a treat when I saw and tasted high amounts of oregano in the pasta sauce. Yechh!! Oregano in tomato sauce only belongs in pizza sauce. Everything else was awful and stereotypical Italian. The ironic thing is that the best Italian food is very simple to prepare and is driven by quality ingredients.

im italian and from New York if you think olive garden is good, you better go to a real private restaurant with real fresh (cooked fresh), not pre packaged garbage. If your near any city even in the midwest you can find decent italian & italian-american food (yea they are different). I've tried OG once it wasn't vile but wasn't good for most italian people or any other people who can tell a big diffirence(i know cant spell). to each his own but what i like to say "mangia bene"=eat well

I have not had bad food here or a wrong order. I actually had some of the best tasting pizza I ever had there. The only bad thing is the slow service. Other than that, no comlpaints about food quality at all.

Honestly their desserts are the most unique thing to me. Their food is good for what it is though, but their service is rarely ever good at least in my experiences.

love the breadsticks

I love their salad, especially the black olives and the atmosphere has the great Italian feel. Good food too.

Just like all the Darden Resturants, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Smokey Bones, ect. They are always hit, or miss on the service, and the food. I don't consider it authentic Italian. I think of it as sit down fast food. VERY run of the mill.